The best FPL midfielders for 24/25

The Stuff You Should Know

🤝 West Ham on verge of signing forward Niclas Füllkrug (Romano)

👀 Emile Smith-Rowe (£5.5m) joins Fulham.

🤕 Man United’s Yoro out for 3 months. Hojlund out for 6 weeks.

⚽️ Haaland scores a hat-trick against Chelsea in a friendly.

📣 We’ve got two new partnerships to announce.

🤑 Join our free-to-enter £250 mini-league here.

Stick around for two midfielder differentials.

Alright?

When lovers ask us to name our favourite position, our answer is always the same: midfield.

Whilst some FPL managers are seduced by the allure of forwards, it’s your midfielders that’ll likely decide whether you’ll have one of those seasons that you casually - but regularly - mention at social gatherings.

That’s partly because you need five of ‘em. But it’s mostly because FPL classifies some of the Premier League’s most attacking players as midfielders, but still rewards them with an extra point for a goal nonetheless.

So who do you pick? In this email, we’ll tell you which midfielders are worthy of your precious coin, and which should probably be swerved.

Btw - we need a favour. If you’re reading this, could you take a moment to reply to this email? Just tell us where you’re reading this from. It’ll really help to ensure our emails don’t end up in junk folders.

The optimal 24/25 Gameweek 1 midfield

Get nice and close because we’re going to whisper a dirty little secret: there is no optimal midfield. At least not one that can ever be calculated.

Sure, you might be lucky enough to pick the five highest scoring midfielders in Gameweek 1. But they won’t be the highest scoring quintet in Gameweek 2. And maybe choosing them comes at the expense of picking a better set of forwards who go on to score more points, or foregoing a highly owned defender who bags a brace.

So when we talk about an optimal Gameweek 1 midfield, what we really mean is “an affordable midfield that doesn’t force us into regular transfers”. We’re looking for life partners here, not one-gameweek-stands. That’s the mindset of the expert.

The below are five midfielders we like. But the money we’ve spent and the players we’ve picked hinge on the rest of our squad. You might have more or less cash to play with.

We’ll spend the rest of the email explaining why we like these picks, and flirting with some alternatives along the way.

The pricey midfielders.

Lazy summary: if we had to pick one, it’d be Salah. If we can pick two, we’d add Foden.

There are only six players priced above £9.0m. Let’s talk about each of them.

Mo Salah or No Salah?

Mohamed Salah (£12.5m, 34.8% owned) is currently the third-most owned midfielder in the game. Many of his owners are eyeing a captaincy in Gameweek 1 (vs Ipswich) too.

But can he be trusted under Slot?

Basing your FPL convictions on pre-season performances is a bit like joining the army because you once had a decent paint-balling session. Still, it’s all we have to go on.

The current mood is excitement for Liverpool fans and despair for their rivals.

Liverpool have beaten Arsenal 2-1 and Man United 3-0 in pre-season, but it’s the nature of their performances under Slot so far that have caught the eye. Crucially, Salah looks every bit the FPL asset we’ve come to know and love.

When we talk about finding those players who might stick around in our squads for weeks and months to come, it doesn’t get much better than a player who has hit over 200 FPL points for the last seven seasons.

Cole Palmer (£10.5m, 50.8% owned)

It’s interesting to consider whether Palmer would be the most-owned midfielder in the game if not for his goal in the Euro 2024 final.

Chelsea, like Liverpool, find themselves under new management. But unlike Liverpool, the pre-season hype around their new coach isn’t quite the same.

Maresca has worked with Palmer at Man City, but the Englishman is desperately topping up his tan in a post-Euros break and hasn’t participated in any pre-season friendlies yet. So it’s hard to deduce how Palmer will do under the new manager.

This WhatsApp poll of our LazyFPL Premium members is an interesting perspective on Palmer’s ownership demographics:

Phil Foden (£9.5m, 29%) and Kevin De Bruyne (£9.5m, 6.8%)

Manchester City’s star midfielders suffer from an affliction that has plagued them ever since Pep Guardiola took charge: Acute Rotation Syndrome (ARS).

But just how severe is their condition?

As it turns out, not particularly.

Phil Foden started 33/38 games last season. He was, as all Man City players were, rested occasionally, but usually this coincided with big fixtures elsewhere: like the game before their first Champions League quarter-final leg against Real Madrid.

He’s significantly more popular than Kevin De Bruyne, who suffered an injury-stricken season in which he only started 15 games. Still, 14 attacking returns from those 15 speak to the potential he has as an FPL pick.

Kevin hasn’t been this cheap since the 19/20 season, and that’s an opportunity. If he can stay fit, he could be the type of midfielder you take home to meet your parents.

We like both of these.

Bukayo Saka (£10.0m, 26.2%)

Perhaps because he sometimes lacks the explosivity of some of his counterparts, Saka has been a little overlooked.

An interesting statistical quirk from last season is that Saka scored more FPL points (125) away from home than ever other player. His first three away fixtures this season are Aston Villa, Spurs and Man City, and it’ll be interesting to see whether that impacts his early-season returns.

He’s not in our Gameweek 1 side. You can’t have everyone, and with just two braces last season (Foden, for example, netted five), we’d rather spend £10m on a player who can more regularly deliver points at scale.

Heung-min Son (£10.0m, 11.8%)

With Leicester away and Everton at home to open the season, it’s surprising that Son is only 11.8% owned. For some reason, the Spurs man usually has to prove himself again each season before the hoards start to pile on. Here’s the typical pattern:

1) Son starts the season with a modest ownership.
2) Son bags an 18-point haul within the first few gameweeks.
3) His ownership rockets, then he does very little for the next four gameweeks.
4) Repeat for the remainder of the season.

But can a player who failed to score against 100 women a few weeks back really be trusted with 10% of your budget?

Summary:

If we had to rank these premiums in terms of how important they are to your team, it’d probably look something like this:

🥇 Salah - highly owned, plenty of captaincy potential, still on pens.

🥈 Foden - should play most games for the best attacking team in the league.

🥉 Palmer - disproportionately high ownership in our view, but that makes not owning him more of a risk.

4️⃣ Saka - always capable of excellence, but not a captaincy option in the opening weeks.

👀 De Bruyne and Son - could be fantastic differentials, but there’s no need to take risks in the opening weeks.

Midfielders - the best budget options.

Summary for the lazy: Anthony Elanga at £5.5m is a bargain, but there are a few interesting options at that price point. If you can afford the extra £1.0m, avoid the £4.5m options.

Unlike the defenders, which boast more bargain bucket steals than a charity shop in South Kensington, FPL HQ have been a little more savvy with their midfielder pricing.

£4.5m midfielders

At £4.5m you can just about afford a dependable, defensive starter. But it ain’t looking too exciting.

Leicester’s Harry Winks (11.2% owned) is one such example. As the Professor excellently outlined in this week’s premium analysis, he won’t be scoring every week, but at least he’ll be on the pitch. Ibrahim Sangare (1.5% owned) is Forest’s equivalent of Winks, but more injury prone.

Crystal Palace paid £20m for 20-year-old Matheus Franca (0.3%), who might be our best hope of an attacking midfielder at £4.5m. But he’s young and his minutes are expected to be patchy.

£5.0m - £6.0m midfielders

This bracket is more interesting, particular if you’ve got £5.5m to spend. If there’s budget, the extra £1.0m investment to upgrade a £4.5m midfielder will probably pay dividends.

Here’s who catches our eye:

• Callum Hudson-Odoi (£5.5m) and Anthony Elanga (£5.5m) of Nottingham Forest both have a lot of promise. The Prof is particularly sweet on the latter, and Forest have excellent opening fixtures.

• Emile Smith-Rowe (£5.5m) has just moved from Arsenal to Fulham. Do you remember him? If he can stay fit he could be a steal.

• People are getting excited about Villa’s Morgan Rogers (£5.5m) because of his preseason performances, but that’s largely because the lad scored a brace against Walsall.

• Harvey Elliott (£5.5m) is another who’s had a promising pre-season, but unlike Rogers, Elliott has plenty of 23/24 minutes on his CV. He has attacking returns in his tank too.

• Amad Diallo (£5.0m) is being talked about a lot after Ten Hag sang his praises in July, but this has all the signs of a hype that dies with preseason.

Our favourite £4.5m midfielder - Matheus Franca. If you’re spending £4.5m on a midfielder, you shouldn’t be depending on them anyway. If Franca plays in Gameweek 1, he’ll become very popular very quickly.

Our favourite £5.0m - £6.0m midfielder - Anthony Elanga. He’ll get good minutes and, with an average of 0.49 expected attacking returns per 90, he’s got the stats behind him too.

Midfielders - mid-priced gems (£6.5m - £8.5m)

Summary for the lazy: Anthony Gordon deserves his high ownership, but this price point is rich with options.

Anthony Gordon (£7.5m, 35.1%), Iberichi Eze (£7.0m, 31.9%) and Christopher Nkunku (£6.5m, 17.3%) are the three most popular midfielders in this price range.

Of the three of them, Gordon is the most known entity. He might be the sort of bloke to eat a cheesestring like a chocolate bar, but he’s an excellent FPL asset. If he had more game time at the Euros, we reckon his ownership would be much higher too.

Remember, he registered 27 attacking returns last season.

Eze and Nkunku are intriguing as well.

The Professor was impassioned in his analysis of Nkunku’s pricing. “If Chelsea were to go out now and purchase an attacking midfielder for €60m who had 36 goals in his last 51 starts, he would not be priced at £6.5 on FPL.”

And it’s hard to argue with him.

FPL HQ have this habit of underpricing players that, for various reasons, weren’t able to play as many minutes as they ought to have done in the season prior. Nkunku is a fine example: he could yet be talismanic for Chelsea.

With that said, the fact he didn’t play much last season means there’s some risk attached. He’s still relatively unknown in the Premier League, and that means those punting on him might need to be patient.

Eze, meanwhile, managed 11 goals and 5 assists last season - a very decent tally for just over 2,000 minutes of football.

He’ll be without Michael Olise this season, and time will tell whether Crystal Palace’s attacking output is impacted without that creativity. There’s a chance that Jean-Philippe Mateta will also miss the opening fixtures - he accompanies France into the semi-finals of the Olympics tomorrow.

Honourable mentions to Leon Bailey (£6.5m), Bryan Mbeumo (£7.0m), Morgan Gibbs-White (£6.5m), Mohammed Kudus (£6.5m) and Jarrod Bowen (£7.5m).

What’s new at Lazy HQ?

There’s been a few developments behind the crusty curtain here at LazyFPL HQ that you ought to know about.

Firstly, we’re partnering with Sleeper this season, a huge US-based fantasy football app that’s just launched in the UK. What better name for a LazyFPL partner brand than a company that literally has the word “sleep” in it?

As part of our agreement, we’re contractually obliged to giveaway £8,000 worth of prizes across the season to you lot, and you’ll never be asked for a penny in return.

We’ll be revealing more info about that soon, but if you want to get involved in our free results prediction league (where we’ll be giving away £500 in prizes every month courtesy of Sleeper), click here. It’s super easy and, as we’ve said, we have to give out these prizes.

PS5 in August perhaps?

Secondly, we’re delighted to announce that we’ve partnered with Fantasy Football Scout for the 24/25 season too. You know when OfficialFPL mention “The Scout”? They’re referring to Fantasy Football Scout - the most well-known FPL tips website on the planet.

This season we’re a part of their network. That means we’ll be using their great resources to back-up our otherwise spurious FPL claims. You can also join Fantasy Football Scout using our link for a 40% discount, if that takes your fancy.

Other Stuff We Found Interesting

1. Pascal Groß is moving to Dortmund (Romano).

2. Riccardo Calafiori, Arsenal’s new defensive signing, is priced at £6.0m.

3. West Ham sign Crysencio Summerville for £20m.

4. These new price reveals:

Sorry to be forward, but next week we’re talking about forwards. See you there? We hope so. Don’t forget to reply - particularly if you’ve made it this far.

Stay lazy,

The LazyFPL team.